Hillary Clinton is reportedly launching her campaign tomorrow. I thought she had already done this. I guess that the last launch went so badly that she wants a do-over. Sure can’t blame her. She is falling in the polls. Her favorability and trust are damaged from serious scandals. She can’t handle questions from the news media. Many liberals are not buying her selective and limited attempts to try to sound like a progressive. As Bernie Sanders has said of her listening tour, “at the end of the day, you have to have an opinion on the basic issues facing America.” Martin O’Malley has often pointed out that it is not necessary to pull him to the left like it is with Hillary Clinton. A speech will not change Clinton’s fundamentally conservative views on Wall Street, use of military force, civil liberties, the environment, and social issues.

Most likley Clinton will have a good sounding speech tomorrow, regardless of whether it lacks substance. The Note has some information on what to expect:

CLINTON TO UNVEIL TALK-ABOUT-HER-MOM STRATEGY AT FIRST CAMPAIGN RALLY: Hillary Clinton spent the opening weeks of her campaign addressing policy issues like criminal justice reform, voting rights, and equal pay for women. But as Clinton transitions to a new, more intense phase of her campaign, expect her to get personal. At Clinton’s first official campaign rally this Saturday in New York City, aides say the Democratic presidential candidate will make her most extensive pitch yet on why she should be president. And her late mother, Dorothy Rodham, will play a central role. “No one had a bigger influence on my life or did more to shape the person I became,” Clinton wrote of her mother in her most recent memoir, “Hard Choices.” According to ABC’s LIZ KREUTZ, at Clinton’s rally this weekend, where Bill and Chelsea Clinton are expected to make their first official campaign appearances, Clinton will explain how her mother’s story has motivated her to run for president. http://abcn.ws/1Iy11oL

–BACKSTORY: Over the years Clinton has often shared her mother’s life story, which was full of trauma and abuse. In Clinton’s telling, Dorothy Rodham was abandoned by her parents as a young girl and sent to live with her unloving paternal grandparents in California. At the age of 14 she left home and found work as a housekeeper.

–WHAT TEAM CLINTON IS SAYING: “She is a well-known figure but when you’re asking the American people to support you as president, even if it is for the second time, there is no skipping of steps,” Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri said in a statement. “If you want to understand Hillary Clinton, and what has motivated her career of fighting for kids and families, her mother is a big part of the story. The example she learned from her mother’s story is critical to knowing what motivated Hillary Clinton to first get involved in public service, and why people can count on her to fight for them and their families now.”

Wait a minute! Her campaign says, “there is no skipping of steps?” What about answering questions from the press? Isn’t that usually a step, as opposed to a campaign full of scripted performances with selected supporters? And what about speaking out on the big issues of the day? Isn’t that normally a step for a presidential candidate? What does she think of NSA surveillance, the situation in Iraq, or the trade agreements in the news, not to mention lots of other issues I and others have questions about? Rick Klein did reflect on this in the same post:

ABC’s RICK KLEIN: As the House votes, probably but finally, on President Obama’s trade agenda, it’s useful to take stock of what the fight has done to the Democratic Party and its 2016 debate. For starters, as Sen. Bernie Sanders pointed out Thursday, the trade issue has not divided the progressive community so much as it has cleaved it from more moderate, pro-business Democrats — including, of course, the White House. Howard Dean‘s brother, Jim, speaking on behalf of Democracy for America, warned Democrats who vote for fast-track negotiating authority or Trade Adjustment Assistance that “we will encourage our progressive allies to join us in leaving you to rot.” Yes, rot. It’s going to take more than a presidential trip to a baseball game to unwind comments like that. As for 2016, Hillary Clinton’s decision to not engage — and not even take a firm position — is itself a policy stance that has frustrated liberals along the way. But they don’t seem to have penetrated the debate in a way that’s made the Clinton campaign reconsider. The fact that a debate that’s torn Democrats apart to the point that they’re threatening to let each other “rot” has played out without the participation of the overwhelming frontrunner for president is nothing short of remarkable.

Yes, Hillary Clinton has learned to out-Nixon Richard Nixon. If Nixon’s downfall was his tapes, the lesson Clinton learned while working on Watergate was not “do not be a crook” but was to burn the tapes, or wipe the server. While Richard Nixon ran on a secret plan to end the Viet Nam war, Clinton just refuses to speak about the issues where she has problems.